The Good Old Days
by enigma939
Summary: Bruce's POV. During the height of the Silver Age campiness, Batman regrets the good old days when he was a grim and gritty vigilante...


**The Good Old Days...**

**A/N: **This little one-shot is from Bruce's POV, and its set during the Silver Age. It's basically Batman's reaction to how crazy his world had become during those campy days...and his yearning for the darker days of his early career.

Sometimes, Bruce just missed the good old days...

The days before the madness. Before the corny one-liners and the campy villains. Before Gotham became a playground for every costume ball reject with a stand-up routine.

Back in that 'Golden Age' when he wasn't 'Batman', the Caped Crusader, Gotham's greatest and most admired hero, the toast of City Hall publicity campaigns and charity balls...but _the _'Bat-Man', that weird creature of the night...the ruthless vigilante all criminals lived in eternal fear of...

He couldn't believe how _much _things had changed from those distant days...

Back then, Gotham was consumed by darkness. Gang lords like Carmine Falcone and Sal Maroni, corrupt City officials, a GCPD that, save for a few dedicated officers like Jim Gordon, was utterly and completely 'bent', people getting mugged coming home every day of the week...

And from that darkness, _he _had emerged. He had turned fear against those who preyed on the fearful, he had struck a crippling blow to the very infrastructure of evil in Gotham...within a year, half the Mob were behind bars...another year, and Gotham had started to look like a civilized society again...

Things started to change. For the better of course. And he had had to change with the times as well.

It was inevitable, he supposed. When the kid came into the picture, it was clear he couldn't carry on the way he had. Hiding in the shadows and scaring the shit out of people became somewhat harder when one was accompanied by a wise-cracking pre-teen dressed in a colourful Robin Hood suit! Besides, there _were _no criminals left to scare...at least not the kind his old spook tactics worked on...

The streets had been taken over by a new breed of criminal. Maniacs like the Joker who weren't scared of him...but frankly, _amused _by him! And then there were the pseudo-intellectuals like the Riddler and the Mad Hatter who sought to match wits with him. And the Catwoman, who most certainly left his mark on him... 

At first, it seemed that this lot would prove to be grislier than the lot whom he'd just taken off the streets...but then over time, slowly but surely, with every insane plot, with every so called 'death trap', with every laughably retarded pun...fighting crime and criminals ceased to be war...and somehow became an old stale joke that never ended!

And with Gotham having changed...he'd had to change as well. After all, his legend was one which was irrevocably tied to that of the city.

So off went the black cape and fearsome dark cowl...and on came the bright blue and grey suit with the big yellow oval on his chest (a walking 'Bat's-eye', Robin had once quipped)...the Batmobile became a flashy sports-car...even the Bat-signal, which once terrified criminals who saw it against the night sky, had been largely replaced by a bright red telephone...a 'hotline' as Commissioner Gordon called it...

Well, he supposed 'lightining up' had its advantages. For one, he'd stopped brooding so much about his parent's death...the futility of his mission...all the frustrations that had all but consumed in those early days of his crusade...he'd started to smile more often, and that, Alfred and Dick had both assured him, was a _very_ good sign indeed for his mental health!

And he supposed he was accomplishing more good this way...being a respected public figure, a rallying point against crime, an inspiration to old and young alike...

But sometimes, what passed off as 'inspiration' in this frenzied, media-driven world, could truly make even the most inspirational of individuals gag!

It had started with those public service commercials...cheap actors wearing even cheaper renditions of his costume, delivering speeches about the virtues of following traffic rules, and donating blood at the City hospitals...to say nothing of that inane toothpaste advert directed at kids ("Batman says strong teeth are the key to taking a _bite _out of crime...buy two tubes of Dennis Dentine's all new 'Bat-flavoured' toothpaste, and get a figurine of Gotham's Dark Knight ABSOLUTELY FREE!") THAT had literally made him choke on his salad at dinner when he'd happened to see that on TV...

Then there were the toys, the action figures...a veritable merchandising empire built upon his chosen moniker and the visage he had once designed to instill fear..._not_ to inspire people to sell 'Bat-burgers' and 'Bat-biscuits'...

He'd trained to be a warrior...a soldier...he'd spent years honing himself to the peak of physical and intellectual perfection...preparing to wage war against the criminal element that had long held Gotham in its thrall...

Instead...he'd ended up signing autographs and becoming Gotham's most eligible bachelor (second only perhaps to a certain billionaire playboy named Bruce Wayne!)

If _this _was what his crusade had achieved thus far...if _this _was what he'd fought for tirelessly, even violently, in those early days of the cape and cowl...then perhaps it had all been in vain...

And now, looking out over the Neon lights and the garish set pieces...from the deepest reaches of his soul...he cried out with longing for the city which had spawned him...a city lost amidst the trappings of this sham 'wonderland' straight out of a 60's TV show...

God, he missed the old days!

Yet he knew that when the old days came back...it would perhaps be these days of whimsicalness, of sheer _campiness_ even, that his nostalgia would glance favourably upon...

_Years later..._

He dragged himself to the chair...battling sheer frustration and exhaustion. Ripping the cowl off his sweat-stained face and hurling it to the cave floor, he went to work on the computer. Five minutes and he was in the GCPD database...reading off the grisly details of the Joker's latest massacre since his escape from Arkham three weeks ago.

Thirty-three dead.

Killed by his lethal 'Joker toxin', released in gaseous form into the ventilation system of an office building.

Sheer madness. Insanity.

Routine.

Violence, death, sadism...it had all been the norm for these last few trying years.

Barbara maimed, Jason dead...Bane 'breaking' him...

The city that had spawned him, that den of vice and depravity, had returned...

The reason for the existence of his legend, in its _pure _form...was back.

'Good old days' indeed.

Now if only things were still as simple as punching out some goofball with lousy puns...


End file.
